Moscow, now your center of Jewish studies - Haaretz

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Sun., October 21, 2007 ,

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Last update - 10:29 21/10/2007

Moscow, now your center of Jewish studies

By Anshel Pfeffer

The largest Jewish studies and cultural event ever to take place in Russia opened in Moscow yesterday.

The program, entitled Limmud FSU, is the fruit of cooperation between dozens of Jewish organizations around the world. It offers a wide variety of classes and workshops, from academic lectures to lessons in Israeli folk songs and folk dancing, taught by Jewish instructors from Russia and numerous other countries.

Some 700 Jews, mostly young people, are attending the program. They have come from all over the Commonwealth of Independent States, including the far east of Russia, a nine-hour flight from Moscow.

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All of the participants came at their own initiative and at their own expense. The lecturers are also all donating their services.

The original Limmud was organized by Britain's Jewish community in that country 25 years ago, and has since become an annual event in England. The program proved so successful that Jewish communities in many other countries have imitated it.

What is unique about the Moscow Limmud is that is brings together disparate elements of the Russian Jewish community that usually have little to do with each other, from the Reform Movement to Chabad and other Orthodox groups. It addition, it brings together both of Russia's warring Jewish communal organizations, the Federation of Jewish Communities in the CIS (Feor) and the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations (Keroor).

The program's main goal is to provide a framework for the younger generation of Jews in the CIS, as the community has been greatly weakened by mass immigration to Israel. The organizers hope to turn it into an annual event, and the next one is already tentatively slated to take place in Yalta - in the very same hostel where Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin held their famous conference toward the end of World War II.

Global Shtetl - Live from Limmud, Moscow

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